Nick Berardino: A new era for Costa Mesa

It's been nearly two years since political civil war broke out in Costa Mesa, and the toll has been enormous:

More than 200 city employees received pink slips, creating a cloud of uncertainty for their families and for the communities they serve. The city has spent more than $1 million in legal fees in an effort to hand over control of city services to private companies. Dozens of negative mail pieces hit Costa Mesa homes leading up to the November election. Residents have endured marathon City Council meetings – waiting for hours just to speak out for their allotted three minutes. Newspapers and TV stations across the nation have chronicled the battleground.

Costa Mesa has become known across the country as ground zero in an ideological war. There have been no winners.

Today, we have a great opportunity to change all of that – to begin working together to forge a shared vision for Costa Mesa. We have an opportunity to write a new chapter in the national Costa Mesa story – to become known as a place where labor, the Council and residents rose together from the battleground and collaborated to overcome our shared challenges.

As the City Council considers Dec. 4 whether to rescind the remaining pink slips, the city's employees have been sharing ideas for how Costa Mesa can deliver the highest-quality services at the lowest possible cost to taxpayers. We are committed to working together on this vision for the future.

One great opportunity lies in a government efficiency model called LEAN – a program born in the private sector and adopted by businesses like Toyota and Boeing. The Orange County Employees Association traveled to King County, Wash., last year to see firsthand how public employees and management have worked collaboratively to streamline government functions, reduce bureaucracy and save millions of taxpayer dollars. Costa Mesa could be the next success story.

We also think it's time to work together on a customer-service initiative to elevate Costa Mesa services, ensuring the highest possible marks for resident satisfaction.

And we'd like to work with the city on a community engagement program that would facilitate greater opportunities for city employees to volunteer and give back to the community which they serve.

We know that when we work together, we can do great things for the community. For example, before the political fighting started, Costa Mesa employees worked with the Council to reform municipal employee pensions, creating a lower tier of benefits for new hires and increasing contribu?tions across the board.

There's so much more we can do.

The way I see it, we are a part of the Costa Mesa family. Sometimes, families disagree. Sometimes, they fight. But the bonds that hold us together are too strong for any one battle to destroy.

What a great victory it would be for Orange County if we could show the rest of the nation that we can overcome the polarization that characterizes so much of our nation's political landscape and work together for a better community.